Dancing on Icicles
by Kimsa Ki-Lurria
Summary: One dance was all Iggy asked for when she offered him anything in the world. One dance for the dozens they'd shared before. The dozens that had made him fall in love with her. And always, her eyes were elsewhere. One-sided Miggy, Fax.  One-shot.


Disclaimer: Maximum Ride isn't mine. It's as simple as that.

1/21/11 P.U.L.L. post, Bookaholic711's anti-writer's block project.

Summary: One dance was all Iggy asked for when she offered him anything in the world. One dance for the dozens they'd shared before. The dozens that had made him fall in love with her. And always, her eyes were elsewhere. One-sided Miggy, Fax.

Note: **Spoilers **for FANG, in case you haven't read it yet. To blame for this one-shot, you have Nicholas Hooper's "When Ginny Kissed Harry," from the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince soundtrack. It's beautiful. =)

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_Dancing on Icicles_

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He remembered their first dance as clearly and painfully as the shocking touch of icicles prickling against his skin. They were both ten, newly escaped from the School, spilling and leaping into the sunlight whenever they could just to tilt their faces into its warmth and squint against its golden brilliance.

Except him. Iggy. By then, it was too late for him yelp at the brilliance of anything in his eyes. By then, the whitecoats had driven their cruel tools into his corneas and pulled him apart until all he was left with was a pair of sightless blue orbs.

"Come out, Ig!" Max said. She must have spotted him cringing in the doorway of the E-shaped house, his shoulders hunched against the sadness that threatened to sweep over him in icy waves. He could hear the others, the younger ones, running and playing in the sunlight. Jeb was out there too, somewhere, had only given him a pat on the shoulder and told him to come out when he was ready.

Iggy shook his head. The sudden touch of Max's small fingers around his wrist startled him.

"Come _on_!" she cajoled, and jerked him out into the sunlight. "We're _outta _there. No more whitecoats to tell us what to do anymore, no more Erasers to chase us down! Have some fun!"

"I don't want to," he mumbled. "What's the point?"

And this part—this part he remembered more clearly than anything else in his fifteen years. He'd pictured it over the years, had wondered what Max must have looked like in the sunlight, the smile she must have had on her face. He would never tell anyone, but he'd drawn a picture of them that day. Just him and Max, her hand over his. The drawing was tucked safely under a loose floorboard in his room, gathering dust and age, safe from eyes that wouldn't understand.

"You know what I saw some people do on TV once?" Max had asked mischievously. "When one of them was sad, the other one cheered 'im up with a dance. Come on. Dance with me, Iggy."

"No," he said, but she was already moving, taking both of his hands and jerking him around with all the grace and enthusiasm of a drunken elephant. And God, she'd been a horrible dancer, a really, really horrible dancer, stepping and stomping on his feet and smacking him in the face with her bony elbows, but he'd loved it. He'd loved every second of it, the movement, the wild abandon he hadn't been allowed since birth. The warmth of the sun on his face, and the energy that fairly buzzed from Max's hands into his.

That was their first dance. Dozens had followed, whenever either of them had been sad or lonely, or sometimes just for no reason at all, just to dance, to move, to feel alive because they could. It was _their_ special thing. No one else, not Fang, not Jeb, not even Max's baby Angel had intruded.

Eventually, they'd grown older, and had quit stupid, kiddy things like dancing around. Iggy didn't dance. What blind mutant pyro danced? He had more important, manlier things to focus on. Like making bombs. And sparring, and…well, other things.

But sometimes, he missed dancing. At first, he'd thought he wanted it back for the movement, the energy—and then, as he grew older and stopped deluding himself, he admitted that it wasn't just dancing he loved.

He loved dancing with _Max_.

Or just Max, in general.

Only, she wasn't interested. Iggy might not have been able to see, but he didn't need eyes to feel the tension in the air whenever Max and Fang were around each other. He'd thought that chasing them out of the flock would ease the pain of it, at least a little, but the longing had only grown stronger.

Now, here he was, at Total and Akila's wedding, standing off on the side as people twirled and pirouetted over the grass. Max was probably somewhere with Fang. Gazzy and Nudge were off stuffing their faces with wedding cake, and he heard Angel's tinkling laughter on the other side of the dancing ring.

He was alone. Really, he didn't mind.

"Ig!"

Except, his heart leapt when he heard _her_ voice, and he couldn't stop the smile that worked its way over his lips when he turned to face her. "Hey, Max," he said easily, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Long time no see."

"Iggy," she said, her voice wavering with mock seriousness as she rested a hand on his arm (his face flushed at the contact, but he kept a straight expression), "I'm so sorry to be the one to tell you this, but…you've gone blind."

"_Have_ I?" He looked up into the sky and pretended to squint. "Well, that explains why the sun's gone out."

Max snorted with laughter. "Uh…it's night, Ig."

"Oh. Right."

She chuckled again, and dropped her hand from his arm. "Aren't you gonna go around and prowl for girls?" she asked. "Or have a cake-eating contest with Gazzy? You know, your usual?"

"Not tonight," he said. Something in his tone must have been a little off, because Max took a step closer to him and shook his elbow.

"Hey. You alright?"

"Yeah. Fine. Just great." Iggy stopped and shifted anxiously from one foot to another. To tell the truth, he still didn't feel completely comfortable around Max; sometimes, he still couldn't believe she didn't hate him for voting her out of the flock. Was she really that great?

_Yes_, said a voice in the back of his head. He brushed it away without another thought, distracting himself with the music threading itself through the chilly air. Total must have let Akila choose the songs (and it was so weird that a dog could even get married in the first place, let alone pick the wedding music), because they were definitely on a more romantic, waltz-like note.

"Iggy," Max said hesitantly, breaking through his reverie, "you know I meant it when I said no hard feelings, right? About the whole voting me and Fang out of the flock…thing? What's it gonna take to show you I meant it? I'll do anything. Seriously."

He almost shook his head, almost turned away. And then an idea entered his head. A stupid, stupid idea.

He went with it.

For a heart-stopping moment, after he wordlessly offered his hand to her, Max didn't say a thing. Then she laughed, and the touch of her fingers on his slowed his panic.

"Dance with me, Max," Iggy said, with only the slightest hint of a smile.

"…Alright."

He took her out onto the grass with the other couples, feeling like he was treading on icicles, like a single out-of-place footstep would break the fragile ice of his affection beneath Max's heels. This was dangerous and stupid, even for him. One wrong move and she would figure everything out—why he'd loved dancing with her so much, why he'd tossed her out of the flock, why he wanted to move with her now.

If she knew that he hoped this one dance, this single bout of spinning and swaying, could start the change of everything between them…she would turn away from him as if he'd slapped her. He knew she would.

Max fell into step almost instinctively. For a moment or two they moved perfectly together, not missing a move, swaying and twirling almost gracefully across the grass.

Then Max drove her high heel into his toe, and he was brought back to earth with a sharp, and rather painful, jolt.

"Err—" Max squeezed his fingers. "Sorry."

"No problem," he ground out from between clenched teeth. "Not like you were much better before."

"Hey." She thumped him lightly on the chest. He could almost feel her grin lighting up the air. "I wasn't _that_ bad."

"Oh, you were. Believe me, you were _really_ bad. I have the scars to prove it."

"Ha, ha. You're so getting it when we get home."

They continued through the rest of the song, content with one of her hands on his shoulder, and his placed politely on her waist. Iggy's heart thrummed in his throat. Steeling himself—_here goes everything—_he tightened his grip on her hand and turned his gaze to where he thought her eyes were.

"Max, do…do you remember our first dance?"

Max gave a light, breathy chuckle that made his chest twinge. "Igs, really? I didn't know you were the mushy type."

"I'm not," he said quickly. Then, a little quieter, "I remember. You made me really happy that day."

"Um." He could tell he was making her uncomfortable. Her palm was sweaty against his as her fingers tightened over his briefly. "That was kind of the point, remember?"

"Well, yeah. But I, uh…I don't know," he said, stumbling over his words like a toddler, blushing up a fire on his cheeks. "It was just really great for me. To have someone there, right after…the operation. I really needed that."

"Well," Max said uncertainly. Then her tone seemed to brighten, and he felt her straighten, regaining her usual confidence. "Anything for my little bro, you know?"

The icicles had broken beneath his feet.

"…Yeah. I know."

A hand came down on his shoulder, firm and unwavering. Fang.

"Hey," the older boy said. "Mind if I borrow Max for the next dance?"

And because he could feel the relief trembling through Max's fingertips, Iggy let go and dropped his hands at his sides. "Sure," he said, looking away. "Go ahead, Fang."

He stepped back. He turned away, even as Max said thanks, called him a great dancer, said she'd missed this routine of theirs. He stood there, silent and motionless in the middle of the twirling couples, listening as Fang and Max swayed off into the distance, their hands joined, their eyes only on each other.

An hour later, Fang would leave for their current safe house. Less than an hour after that, he would write a note and take off into the night, leaving Max to crumple into a million little pieces.

The E-shaped house wasn't hard for Iggy to find, even blind as he was. After Fang was gone and Max had finally cried herself to sleep, he went to their old home, pried up that floorboard and took out the picture he'd drawn. From his pocket he took out a match.

When he scattered the ashes across the canyon, he thought he heard them ring with the sound of a hundred falling icicles.

_o o o_

A/N: Please, please review - I love feedback almost as much as I love writing. Almost.

-Kimsa


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